


Two Dumbasses

by tiara123458



Series: Tara's Parkner Week 2019 [1]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Day One of Parkner Week, F/M, Identity Porn, M/M, Minor Angst, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Not Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Not super explicit panic attacks, Panic Attacks, Parkner Week 2019, blink and you miss it - Freeform, but be careful anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-02
Updated: 2019-08-02
Packaged: 2020-07-29 13:29:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20083003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiara123458/pseuds/tiara123458
Summary: Harley had been trying a multitude of different ways to get Spider-Man to reveal his identity to him, all with varying amounts of success.In which Peter is tired, Harley is sneaky, and Tony is amused.





	Two Dumbasses

**Author's Note:**

> This is for Parkner Week 2019. Its not the best, and I didn't really edit it much, but I hope you like it!

_It wasn’t meant to end like this_, Peter thought bitterly, looking down from giant net that he was currently trapped in, glaring down at the figure smirking below him.

Peter had imagined many ways for his most current conundrum to have ended, but this had never been a part of one of his daydreams, oddly enough. But of course, dramatic endings have dramatic beginnings.

  
I--II--II--III--II--II--I

  
“Oi, Parker! Did you hear?” Harley collapsed into the chair next to Peter, a manic grin on his face.

“Hear what?” Peter was dreading the answer, especially as he had a feeling he already knew.

“Spider-Man got hurt two days ago, and since then no one has sighted them. You know what this means?”

“That Spider-Man needed a break?”

“No! Well, yes, but that’s not what I meant.”

Peter raised an eyebrow, working to put all of his judgement into his expression. Harley had been obsessed with the identity of Spiderman ever since he came to New York a couple months before. Why, Peter wasn’t quite sure, but he did know that it was quite inconvenient for him.

Harley had been trying a multitude of different ways to get Spider-Man to reveal his identity to him, all with varying amounts of success. Harley’s most recent attempt had been to corner him. Peter wasn’t quite sure how Harley had been planning on accomplishing that, considering that he could walk on walls and was able to web sling, but he had shrugged it off, figuring that Harley couldn’t get into _that_ much trouble.

Oh how wrong he was.

Mr. Stark always liked to claim that Peter gave him gray hairs and that he was a trouble magnet, but personally, Peter thought that Harley was far worse than he was.

In a single night, Harley had gone out to find Spider-Man, and nearly managed to get shot by showing up at the most inopportune moment, and then _somehow_ followed him to the next crime scene (Peter had no clue how he had managed that, Harley definitely wasn’t fast enough to keep up with his web slinging) and managed to get a black eye and a shallow cut on his chest from where he had nearly been stabbed.

Peter had been one injury away from a heart attack.

“What this means is, if Spider-Man was injured enough to be out of the count for a few days, then the wound was probably bad enough to warrant a hospital trip! We’ve seen him get shot and run into burning buildings before, and still come out the next day mostly unscathed. So if his healing factor couldn’t take care of it overnight, then it was probably bad enough to warrant a hospital trip. Hospital trips mean hospital files.”

Peter stared flatly at the dumbass sitting across from him.

Now, it should be known that Peter is most definitely not used to being the voice of reason, but between the two of them, Peter most certainly didn’t do quite as many stupid things--even if Harley would refute that. Harley had this chaotic energy that Peter had been drawn to ever since he arrived, but unfortunately that chaos extended to his actions as well as his attitude. This means that Harley was unpredictable and as liable to be a dumbass as he was to be a smartass.

That having been said, Harley was quite easily one of the most intelligent people that Peter had ever met, and considering that he went to Smart Kid School™ and knew Tony Stark and Shuri, that was saying something. The logic used was sound, and technically Harley wasn’t completely wrong.

There were still dark bruises up and down Peter’s back that made him sore when he moved, but he probably could have gone out the night before if Mr. Stark had let him (“Pete, your wrist is fractured in two different places, you’re a giant bruise and you had a panic attack last night. You are not going patrolling. Aunt Hottie would kill me. FRIDAY, lockdown on the Spiderbaby.”).

Peter’s most recent villain, a large man who insisted on dressing up like a rhino--why did Peter always get the weird ones?-- had thrown a bridge at him. A bridge! While it wasn’t enough to kill Peter, it was enough to hurt him, and more importantly, it was enough to send him spiralling into a panic attack as he remembered the last time he had been surrounded on all sides by rubble, as the air in his lungs constricted, as--

Peter cut off that thought abruptly, taking a deep breath.

Mr. Stark had ended up carrying Peter back to the tower and getting him treated in the private medical wing. Because of this, Peter knew that Harley’s search of local hospitals wouldn’t bear fruit, but there was something a bit more pressing that Peter was wondering about.

“Assuming you’re going to do what I think you are, isn’t that, like, a major invasion of privacy?”

“Aw, c’mon Pete! Live a little!”

The irony. Peter carefully kept any expression off his face and stared at Harley, hoping to stare him into submission. Harley stared back.

“Do you have a better idea? If not, I’m going to continue on with my idea. Besides, I can just have Friday sort through them. Things like their approximate age, sex, and the type of injury.”

“I’ll tell Ms. Potts. You know how she’d feel about another PR incident.”

Harley gasped dramatically.

“You wouldn’t!”

“I won’t hesitate, bitch!”

“Tony would be on my side.” Harley muttered petulantly, rolling his eyes.

Peter personally wasn’t so sure about that, as while Mr. Stark probably wouldn’t care about the invasion of privacy, he did care about respecting Peter’s boundaries. But then, looking up random people’s hospital files wouldn’t exactly be violating Peter’s boundaries. So maybe Tony would--

Peter’s thought was rudely interrupted when Harley started speaking again.

“If you won’t let me violate people’s boundaries and you won’t tell me who Spider-Man is, then what do you suggest?”

Not for the first time, Peter considered just telling Harley that he was Spider-Man. When Harley first arrived, Peter hadn’t trusted Harley enough to tell him, but now they were friends--God, Peter wanted to be something more--and Harley already knew that Tony and Peter both knew Spider-Man. It wouldn’t be a huge jump to tell Harley.

The only thing stopping Peter at this point was pure and utter terror. They’d been friends for a couple months now, and it had gotten so that Peter got increasingly anxious every time he even thought of telling Harley his secret. Mr. Stark had told Peter in the beginning that Harley was trustworthy, that it would be easier to just get it out of the way. And Mr. Stark was right. Not that Peter would ever tell him that.

Peter knew that the longer he held it off, the worse it would be, the more upset Harley would be with him. _He knew that, damn it!_

In the same way, Peter knew that if Harley kept on going the way he was, he would figure it out eventually even without Peter telling him. Peter knew he would have been found out when Harley had tried to corner him if it wasn’t for the voice modulator and his attempt at a quick exit, and he would have been found out before that when Harley had tried to hack Mr. Starks files if Mr. Stark hadn’t actively kept him out.

Peter knew all of that, and yet.. He couldn’t bring himself to tell Harley.

It was because of this, that Peter agreed to help Harley catch Spider-Man. He just hadn’t been expecting it to work.

That was how he got into the mess that he was in currently.

Mr. Stark would laugh his ass off when he heard about this. Peter could just imagine the_ I Told You So_’s now. Sigh.

  
I--II--II--III--II--II--I

  
Harley was laughing his ass off.

Peter was such a dumbass.

_I never thought it would end like this_, Harley thought gleefully, looking up at the caught Spider-Man.

“Well? Are you going to let me out?” Harley looked up at Peter--ahem, Harley looked up Spider-Man with a shit eating grin on his face.

“Now, why would I ever want to do that?” This was _priceless_.

Peter glared at Harley through the mask, his eye goggles narrowing. Harley would never tell him this--that was a blatant lie, he would 100% tell Peter this--but he didn’t look any less like a drowned kitten when he was an angry Spider-Man than he did while he was an angry Peter Parker.

_Adorable_.

Peter must have seen something on Harley’s face, because his eyes narrowed further, making it look like he was squinting and he crossed his arms in front of his chest.

“Now then, Spidey. I have you caught in my net, my web if you will. Now, you will tell me what I wish to know!” Harley decreed dramatically, making a fist and raising it in the air as if he was a mobster in one of the books Nat liked so much but pretended to hate.

Harley was expecting a bit of resistance, for how much Peter had tried to keep the secret from him, so he was somewhat surprised when Peter just sighed and nodded before peeling off his mask.

“Huh. I was expecting that to be harder.”

“That’s all you have to say? You’re not surprised at all?”

“Nope.”

“Not even a little bit?”

“Peter, I love you, but you’re really bad at keeping secrets. I’ve known since a few days after I got here.” Harley froze as he realized what he said, before desperately hoping that Peter took it the wrong way. Friends tell each other they love each other all the time, this was just like that, right?

This was not just like that. Harley had been pining after Peter ever since he saw him, and before that he had been pining over Spider-Man. When he first came to New York, he had genuinely had plans to unmask him, and (if in the right age range and cute) woo him.

Those plans came to a halt when Harley met Peter, before immediately starting up again once he saw the suit lying on Peter’s bedroom floor. To Harley, it had been a race to see if he could unmask Peter before Peter told him, or if Peter would tell him first. It had been a race that Harley was expecting to lose, but then months passed by without a word, despite what Harley had thought was the best friendship he’d ever had developing, despite the fact that Harley did not try to keep it a secret in any way whatsoever that he was trying to find out Spider-Man’s identity.

And it had hurt a little bit, to know that Harley was trusting Peter with more and more of himself every single day, while Peter only gave one facet of himself to Harley. Harley waited it out though, forced himself to be patient, only for this extremely anti-climatic moment.

To put it lightly, Harley was a bit upset.  
  
“If you knew all along, why didn’t you confront me about it? Or more importantly, why did you keep trying to unmask me?” Peter studiously ignored the works “Peter, I love you, but…” ringing in his ears. Despite that, he was one hundred percent certain that there was a tomato red blush covering Peter’s cheeks.

“Nuh-uh. _I’m_ not the one captured in a net here. I’m the one who get’s to ask questions, thank you very much.”

“Alright. Shoot.”

Harley hesitated.

“Why-” Harley paused again, not sure how to word--how to say--the question without sounding vulnerable, before he decided _fuck it_.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Peter was silent for a long moment. Anxiety was starting to creep up Harley’s throat when Peter started to speak, his voice quiet and more serious than Harley had ever heard it.

“Did you know that I never told my Aunt May, who I’ve been living with since I was four years old? The only reason she found out was because she came in while I was taking the suit off.”

Peter went quiet. Before Harley could reply, Peter continued.

“Did you know that my best friend, the only friend I really had from Kindergarten until Sophomore year, didn’t find out until he saw me crawling in through my window while waiting for me to get home? Did you know that I never told Mr. Stark either, but that he put the pieces together and then showed up in my living room. I’ve never told anyone, Harley.

“But I wanted too. When you first arrived, Mr. Stark told me I should just out and tell you, that it would be easier in the long run. And he was right. Of course he was right. But I didn’t know you, and then we became friends, and I liked you so much, and then suddenly I realized that it was too late. It would seem weird if I told you, after we had been friends for so long and you have made so many attempts to find out Spider-Man’s identity. And I was afraid. I was so so afraid that you would hate me. And-”

Harley cut off Peter’s rambling by taking down the trap, letting Peter fall to the floor still in the net.

“You dumbass,” Harley mumbled, reaching into the net to grab Peter’s hand and pull him up and then hugging him to his chest, hoping that this wouldn’t make things weird.

Peter stood stiffly, trying to ignore the bruises that had suddenly made their presence known once again as he hugged Harley back. They were all that was left of the bridge incident thanks to his healing factor, but falling to the floor in a net didn’t feel the best.

“Pete? You’re standing weird.”

“Oh, its nothing, don’t worry about. I just had a bridge dropped on me the other day--”

Harley’s face went pale as the implications hit him and he flung himself away from Peter, his eyes roaming up and down Peter’s body, trying to find the injuries. Harley had known Peter was Spider-Man for months now. Why hadn’t he realized that the aches and pains that Spider-Man acquired were Peter’s as well?

“Hey, it’s fine. Look, see? I’m fine. I only have a few bruises, and I got out of it okay, right? Harley?”

Harley took a deep breath before hugging Peter again, an intense fear coating his insides. When Harley had first found out, he could only think about how convenient it was that both his crushes were the same person, and after that his thoughts shifted to how he could woo Peter (which he had admittedly not gotten very far on) and more importantly, get Peter to trust him enough to tell him the big secret. He had never really thought about what happened when Peter went out, because it was _Peter_. Peter was Peter, it had never really actually occured to Harley that it was _Peter_ going and fighting thugs and kicking ass.

Sure, Peter was Spider-Man, and Spider-Man fought the bad guys, but although Harley had connected points A and B, and points B and C, he had never actually connected A and C. Whenever he saw Peter after he'd been out Spider-Manning, he'd never seemed all that injured. What if Peter had died out there?

This firmed Harley’s resolve. Peter wouldn’t die without Harley asking him out, without Harley giving it his best shot.

“I really like you. Do you want to go out?”

Peter pulled back slightly, a surprised look on his face as he met Harley’s eyes, before a warm smile swept across his face.

“I’d like that.”

Harley smiled.

  
I--II--II--III--II--II--I

  
Peter was right. Tony did laugh his ass off when he heard what happened.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! If you liked it, leave kudos or a review. :)


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